A year in France

New French Words

On Thursday, a French friend invited me and another girl over for lunch. It was a national holiday in France, so she had the day off and decided to help us with our French — especially because my friend has her final exams at the Sorbonne coming up.

We spoke French for two hours, which, in and of itself was quite an accomplishment, I think.

But I learned two things that will stick with me for a while:

First, after our friend served us fish soup, she asked if we wanted “baguettes.” We both said “Non, Merci,” — My friend was probably thinking, just like I was, that baguette would be an odd accompaniment to Thai soup.

She returned with some chopsticks. Baguettes. That’s right. That’s what they’re called in French.

Then I remembered reading a fairy tale in French and seeing that they called magic wands “Baguettes,” also. We came to realize it just means something like “stick,” or at least refers more to the shape than the object itself. Interesting. From now on, I’m calling chopsticks “baguettes.” Not that I’ll have much chance to talk about them, since I have somewhat of a chopstick handicap (I used to veto any Asian restaurants on first or second dates, when I was single, because I dreaded the “Oh, you can’t use chopsticks! Here, let me show you!” conversation that inevitably popped up after 5 minutes).

Later we were talking about hairstyles for the INSEAD summer ball and were discussing which chignon we wanted. I figured the style known as a “French twist,” likely had a different name here. I was right – they call it a “chignonbanane.” Yes, that’s a banana updo.

Awesome.

From now on, that is what I’m calling them. French Twists? You are dead to me. From now on, you are “Bananes.”